Restaurant Review: Eureka! Burgers

Indio, California: I needed a few
things from Whole Foods Market in Palm Desert and Dave volunteered to drive. I
suspect he volunteered to drive because Whole Foods is across the street from
Total Wine, but was happy for the offer just the same. As long as we were
heading to Palm Desert, we decided to have lunch before shopping.

I looked over my list of "restaurants to try" and settled on a Mexican place on
El Paseo. Half-way to Palm Desert, DT asked which restaurant I had chosen and
when I told him, he reminded me we had been there before - several years ago and
the restaurant has a funny story amongst his golfing buddies.

Years ago, Dave was here with a dozen men on a golf trip. They had rented condos
and golfed all day - often 36 holes in a day, because they were still young
enough to golf 36 holes in a day - and would go out for dinner (and surely
several drinks) in the evenings. One night, one of the pals, Dickey, suggested
they all go out to a "great Italian place he knew on El Paseo". They loaded up
in cars and Dickey led them to a Mexican restaurant and is still ribbed about it
to this day.

Just as we were having this conversation (retelling the tale), our car passed-by
another restaurant on my list - Eureka! Burgers. The brakes were applied, the
turn signal was engaged and we switched from a Mexican lunch to all-American
burgers in fifteen seconds.

Eureka!
is a small chain of restaurants, mostly located in California. It is a sit-down
place, with a bar and outdoor seating. They specialize in craft beers and
American-only bourbons. (Is bourbon made elsewhere? I am confused about this
claim.) The restaurant is freer with exclamation points than this blog - and
that is saying something!

The bar at Eureka! burgers in Indian Wells

They are very serious about their drinks. Their house cocktail is an old
fashioned, made with
Old Overholt
rye.

I had a very non-American margarita.

Probably because I thought we were on our way to a Mexican restaurant?

The menu is varied (salads, soups, appetizers - you can even get tacos), but
the emphasis is on burgers. DT went a little Mexican by ordering the
Tortilla Burger - tomato, red onion, pickled jalapeno, guacamole, cilantro,
Monterey Jack, spicy chipotle sauce - grilled in a flour tortilla. He
ordered his burger with onion rings. Dave had a beer, brewed locally by
La Quinta
Brewing.

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"It's a semi-true story, believe it or not.
I've made up a few things and there's some I forgot.
But the life and the telling are both real to me,
And they all run together and turn out to be a semi-true story."- Jimmy Buffett